This partial explanation is excerpted  from  “How America Can Bike and Grow Rich, the National Bicycle Greenway in Action”

“If you look at old people, they are terrified of losing their license because to them, that is a death sentence. They lose their freedom. All they have left are buses and time and cost prohibitive taxi cabs. Bikes are out of the question because there is nowhere safe for them to ride even a three-wheel bike when they start to lose their balance skills.

And I talk to them all the time when I’m on my own adult trike. They are usually the most curious about that mode of conveyance. It is obvious to me that they see three wheels as a way for them to get around but then I can see in their eyes that they realize it is not the ticket to freedom they seek because there is no room on the roads for them, And yet if we had running through town a Greenway fed by wide bike laned spurs that connect to shopping and business districts and the like, do you not think your mom would love to be out there riding with all those bike riders she does not want to hit? And she can even go as slow as she wants. And most three and even four wheeled bikes have plenty of cargo space…” 

“Excuse me.” another reporter asked, “but did you say you also ride an adult trike?”

“Well OK, I ‘gotta  admit that for the last ten years I’ve only been riding HiWheels. For transportation no less. So that I’d be ready for what I have ahead of me and to be honest it broke my heart when I had to sell my last trike so I could pay for at least some of this bike,” I paused as I let them run their eyes over the 1891 Eagle that I held before them. “But before I got hooked on riding Ordinaries, another name for these kind of bikes, I had a stable full of trikes. I even had one that I could run as a tandem by hooking another one to its rear haunches. In fact when I lived in Santa Cruz, that was pretty much the only way that I got around. Super comfortable and the way they are building them now mine was also pretty fast.”